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User blog:Perfectvelvet/Help!: A Primer for New Players
Work in Progress... Welcome, New Players! So you've read the books and watched the series; now you're ready to try your own hand at the game of thrones. But how do you do it? You've come to the right place! Game of Thrones: Ascent is a very deep RPG with a ton of content, and it's understandable to be confused. There are so many facets to the game that it can be overwhelming. When I first began playing, I did a lot of things that I view as newbie mistakes because, quite honestly, I really didn't understand what I was doing. There are a lot of FAQs out there (and many good ones right here on the Wiki), so why create one more? This is what I'' wish I had known when I was a beginning player. These are the questions I wanted answered, preferably during the little tutorial that you are given while playing the Prologue. Hopefully this will help someone out there. If you have any questions, feel free to ask! Starting Out: Creating Your Character If you read nothing else from this section, read this: (almost) '''all of your choices are permanent' until you restart or reincarnate. 'Your Character' When you first start the game, you choose a name and image for your character. These cannot be changed unless you restart or reincarnate. Names and images may be duplicated among players, so don't worry if you name yourself Tyrion Lannister and come across another Tyrion Lannister in the game. 'Your Holding' One of your first choices during the tutorial is to name your holdings. The default name is Ascent Hold, but you can call it whatever you'd like. This name can be changed at any time through your Character screen. 'Your Background' Your next choice will be to select your character's background: who you were before you rose to power. Were you a highborn fosterling? A hedge knight? Your background can make for some rich RPG. Backgrounds do have benefits as well. There are some minor increases to particular stats, based upon which background you select. For instance, selecting merchant will give you +2 to Trade and +1 to Intrigue right off the bat. In my view, these really don't matter; they are so small that they don't make a huge impact on anything. Choose what you find most appealing. Achieving the complementary alignments to a particular background will give you a title. Using merchant again, if you have high New Ways, Cunning, and Family alignments, you will be able to style your character Broker, rather than Lord/Lady. All backgrounds have a title associated with them. There is no background that uses the combination of Old Ways, Truthful, and Family for its alignment choices, so if you follow this path, you will receive the title "The Humble." Like your character's name and portrait, your background cannot be changed unless you restart or reincarnate. 'Swearing Fealty' Finally, you will be able to swear fealty to a Great House. This is a wonderful RPG element, but there are other benefits as well. Fealty Building Each fealty has its own special building, which you can only obtain by swearing fealty to that Great House. If you restart, you will lose the ability to use that building; if you reincarnate, you may be able to keep that building (see the Reincarnation section for more on this). Each building has two resources that you can produce. For instance, if you swear fealty to House Baratheon, your special building is the Feast. The Feast produces wood and stone. Therefore, while your Village Center is producing horses, you can produce wood at the Feast. If you continually reincarnate and end up with all of the special buildings, you will be able to craft all of the resources concurrently. Your fealty building also has items that can only be crafted there. The Master Crafted Warhammer is a powerful battle weapon with an increase to fight actions and an increased speed of fight attacks. While there may be comparable items that you can purchase for gold, this weapon can be crafted using resources and items that are obtainable for free. Bonus Action Of the three types of actions (battle, trade, and intrigue), there are three sub-types. Each fealty specializes in one of those sub-types. House Targaryen specializes in Spy, for example, while House Lannister specializes in Swindle. Your fealty's talents will add up to an additional +16% to your attacks and defenses of that sub-type. If you prefer a particular action, specializing is a great way to enhance your abilities. Special Talents Each fealty has its own talent tree. Aside from the previously mentioned sub-type specialization, each tree contains bonuses to other abilities. One of the most lauded talents is Sand Steed (House Martell), which allows 3% faster quest completion per level, up to 24% faster; this is a premium talent and you need to spend gold to access it, but many feel it is worth the cost if they are swearing fealty to House Martell on their final reincarnation. House Greyjoy's talent, Arms of the Kraken, allows 3% (up to 24%) faster adventure completion, and that is a great choice if you are farming rare items. I like House Tully's talent, Harvest, which increases resource production by 2% (up to 16%). If you add that with a few other talent from buildings, you can produce resources in record time, which really helps with crafting. As with your character portrait and name, and your background, your fealty cannot be changed unless you restart or reincarnate. 'Banner' After meeting with your fealty's representative, you get to create your own banner. This will be displayed on your holdings page as well as next to your name, both viewable by friends and enemies. Unlike all of the other permanent choices, you may edit your banner as much as you'd like. 'Alignments' As you are making choices in the game, you will see various alignment options tied to some of the selections. These come in pairs: Old Ways/New Ways for tradition, Family/Realm for duty, and Truthful/Cunning for integrity. The choices are primarily for RPG purposes; your character will not become an evil overlord if you select Cunning every time, and he or she won't murder children if you opt for Realm over Family. Choosing the same alignment whenever it is available will increase your percentage of that alignment. On your character screen (viewable by clicking your character's portrait in the upper left portion of the screen), you will see a scale displaying your alignment. You can find out the actual percentage on your stats page. There are, however, certain pathways that will change based upon which alignment option you choose. Some of these choices will carry over into other storylines and volumes. You will still have the same quests, but the text may be different. You can also obtain titles for your character by reaching a high (over 90%) alignment percentage. If are over 90% truthful, you can style yourself "The Sincere." A high realm percentage will get you "The Stalwart" title. Alignments can be changed as you play; simply begin choosing the other option. It is possible, although a bit challenging, to go from one extreme to the other during your character's lifetime. I chose Old Ways/Cunning/Family so I could obtain the "Keeper of Ways" title with my minor noble by marriage background, then I swung my integrity alignment all the way back to Truthful to obtain "The Humble" title. This did require me to play through all four volumes, half of Forging Bonds, whatever was available of Volume V, and a little bit of Volume You -- but it is possible! 'Titles' When you start out, you will only be able to style yourself Lord or Lady, depending on your character's sex. (If you choose the hedge knight background, you may also be referred to as Ser.) Aside from those I mentioned previously, you can obtain different titles by reaching certain milestones, competing in Alliance versus Alliance combat, or ranking highly in a Tales event. Titles remain with you when you reincarnate, so you will always have them with you. They are for vanity purposes; using one title over another does not affect your character's strength in any way. To change your title, click on your character's portrait in the upper left portion of the screen. Then choose the character tab. Beneath your portrait will be a drop down menu of all available titles. Stats: How to Improve Your Success Rate The first time you will realize that your stats can make a huge impact will likely be the Volume I Chapter 3 quest Armor Yourself. You will take one look at Lord Roxton's stats (100 in all three areas!) and take a look at your own (nowhere near 100, not even if you added them all up), and you'll cry. You'll probably fail the quest once or twice (or more). Most important to keep in mind is your success or failure is based on a random number generator. If you have a 20% chance of succeeding, the odds are not in your favor. The odds don't improve the more you do it; you will always have a 20% chance of succeeding. Likewise, if you have a 95% chance of succeeding, and you fail, you will also cry. I can't tell you how many times the quest said it was "easy" for me to succeed yet I failed anyway. Don't give up. There are two (easy!) ways to increase your stats. Equip Your Character and Your Sworn Sword Wait, what? Ser Hugo didn't go over that in your tutorial! Here's what you need to know. The gear on your character helps all of your sworn swords, whereas the gear on your sworn sword helps only that sworn sword. So if you have a really great item with high stats, give it to your character, not your sworn sword. If you don't have any good gear yet (and around the time of the evil quest mentioned above, you probably won't), put your best gear on your character. You can always swap gear as you get better pieces. Upgrade Your Buildings Maester Lucas neglected to tell you this, but by upgrading your various buildings, not only are you getting the benefit of that particular upgrade (like improving the results of your crafted items), but you also gain stat points. These points, much like the gear on your character, help all of your sworn swords with their attacks and defenses. Take a look at the Smithy, which you add to your holding during the tutorial. See that number over the building's image? That's how many times you've upgraded that building. Now click on the building itself. See the banner at the top, with the icons for battle, trade, and intrigue? That's how many stat points you have in those actions. The Smithy is a battle building, so you will only ever see points in the battle section, but if you bought all of the upgrades, that would add 40 to your overall battle stats; if you buy the premium upgrade using gold, you can get up to a maximum of 55! All buildings are like this. Some buildings are geared toward a particular action; the Emissary is an intrigue building, so you can expect your upgrades to benefit your intrigue action stats. Your religious buildings (Sept, Godswood, R'hllor Temple) are equally balanced between the three action types. Other buildings may vary, but the point is you can increase your overall stats without ever gearing up your characters; you just need the money from your counting house. If you fully upgraded every building (including all fealty buildings), you would have 393 battle, 374 trade, and 368 intrigue. Premium talents (purchased with gold) will add even more. And again, that's without having any gear on your character. So my advice? Upgrade your counting house first! 'Marriage and Betrothal' The last things worth mentioning regarding your character are pacts. You can form a marriage pact with another player of the opposite sex. Not only does this pact give you power when you first form it, you also can exchange a Rasher of Bacon or Ale once per day. Since these items can't be crafted, Gear: Being the Best Sworn Swords: How to Train and Equip Quests: The Game in a Nutshell Gold: Spending Real Money for Big Rewards Reincarnation: You Want Me to What? Player versus Player: Test Your Mettle Alliance versus Alliance: Attack, Defend, Loot Best Tips Ever! # Completing chapters gives you rewards. Don't forget to claim them! You get a pretty nice dagger when you're done with Volume I if you've reached 90% on any alignment (which is easy to do). Category:Blog posts